Review of Tom Diventi’s book “The Baltimore Kid” and Punk’s Salad Days

Tom DiVenti was born and raised in an early 1960s working-class Baltimore City neighborhood. It was row houses, apartments and small ‘30s-40s houses on dinky city-sized lots. Most people worked in Baltimore’s industrial world, and their children of the 1950s and 60s were expected to do so too. However, young DiVenti discovered a box of old books in an aunt’s basement that led him down a treacherous literary path. That early literary immersion shape-shifted at around 12 years old into a brave, perceptive poet and artist.